San Luis is the oldest
non-Indian community in Colorado. A Hispanic culture
in American society. It's a place where
the spirit of who we are, the spirit of
religion, the spirit of family is important. It's that uniqueness. It's that friendliness. It's that openness. It's a very spiritual place. This part of the United
States was actually settled long before
Plymouth Rock was settled, long before the
pilgrims entertained a community on the eastern
side of the country. We want to show our children
and our children's children what life was at the beginning
here in San Luis. This place is special. This program was funded by
the History Colorado State Historical Fund. Supporting projects
throughout the state to preserve, protect,
and interpret Colorado's architectural and
archaeological treasures. History Colorado State
Historical Fund-- create the future,
honor the past. With support from the Denver
Public Library and History Colorado with additional funding
and support from these fine organizations and
viewers like you. Thank you. If you looked at a map
of southern Colorado, it's pretty easy to find
the San Luis Valley. It's an arrowhead shaped
valley in the dead center of southern Colorado
between the Sangre de Cristo range on the east and the San
Juan Mountains on the west, reaching down into New
Mexico, and ending in a point to the north at the watershed
of the Arkansas River. It's the highest alpine valley
in the continental United States. It's also the largest
alpine valley. We are 150 miles long
and 50 miles wide. The valley in size is equal to
about the country of Israel, bigger than some of the
states like Rhode Island or Connecticut. The San Luis Valley was the
home of the Ute Indian tribe. For centuries, if not
millennia, Ute Indian people have used the valley
as a place to live, a place to find game to hunt,
to fish, to gather resources that they need in order to
survive in the Rocky Mountains. They were a nomadic people
who lived off the land, so they were eating
whatever they could hunt and whatever they could gather--
buffalo, and deer, and rabbits, and whatever berries
and fruits there were in the area at the time. The oldest evidence
of human habitation goes back more
than 11,000 years. Folsom Points were discovered
by the Great Sand Dunes National Park. It is considered sacred ground
for the Native American. Mount Blanca is one of
the four sacred mountains for the Navajo. The Hopi, their creation,
where they came up out of the middle of the
earth was near what we know as the San Luis lakes. So the valley has always
been an area where people came to hunt, mostly. It was well known for
antelope, deer, elk, buffalo. The winters were always
too harsh for anybody during those times to
stay for very long. The first people that came
through were the Spanish. Francisco de Coronado
and his band of soldiers got here on or about
August 25, 1542. That's the feast of St.
Louis, the King of France, and that's where
the name comes from, San Luis-- San Luis
Rey de Francia. And the valley took
its name from there, and so after that the place was
known as El Valle de San Luis, even though there
was no people here. It was actually for
Spain when people started coming into the
valley and exploring it. There were many explorations
into the valley, but none that really were
able to sustain themselves until the 1830s, 1840s. Most of the people from here
can trace their ancestry to those early Spanish
explorers and settlers. By the 1820s and 30s,
sheepherders from northern New Mexico were grazing their
flocks in the southern reaches of the valley, and by the
1830s, Hispanic settlers began to try to establish the
first permanent settlements in the valley. Now, those early
attempts were thwarted by the Ute Indians, who
still called this their home, and the Utes, although very
tolerant of Spanish and Mexican traders and travellers,
simply weren't ready to accept Hispanic
settlement in the valley. There was a treaty between the
Ute and the Spanish settlers. The Ute were then
in the reservation in south western Colorado. So that left the San Luis
Valley here for settlement. Many communities were set
up along the river banks because it provided
access to water for irrigation,
water for sustenance, water for your animals. So those areas
were settled first. People were working the
land, trying to create crops, trying to create some
sense of sustainability. Growing their own food, gardens. They brought with them the
Churro sheep, and cattle, and horses. So they were able to create
ways to feed their families and then ways to
barter with each other. There was really no
form of currency, but people were using
what they created to help sustain each other. In 1821, the Republic of
Mexico won its independence from Spain, and the valley
became part of Mexico. After the Mexican
American War of 1848, the valley became part
of the United States as part of the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo. So at different times, you
could have lived in the valley and at least been under
the paper jurisdiction of the empire of Spain,
the Mexican republic, and the United
States of America. The Spanish government
and the Mexican government both gave land grants
to large groups of immigrants, who were moving
from northern New Mexico into southern Colorado. The Beaubien Land Grant, the
Sangre de Cristo Land Grant, and the Conejos Land Grant
were three land grants that all had something to do
with property in the San Luis Valley. In 1844, the governor
of New Mexico, a man named Manuel Armijo,
issued a land grant in the San Luis Valley to two
residents of Taos, New Mexico, a man named Narcisco Beaubien
and another Canadian immigrant named Stephen Louis Lee. Lee and Beaubien were
killed in the Taos Pueblo Uprising of 1847,
and their claims went to Narcisco's
father, Carlos Beaubien. Carlos Beaubien was a judge. He was a businessman. He was very well connected
in New Mexico society, and by the early
1850s, after the valley became part of
the United States, Beaubien began sponsoring
settlers and colonists to move on to his land grant
in the San Luis Valley. San Luis was established
on April 5 of 1851 and that's why it is
referred to as the oldest town in the state of Colorado. And so under
Beaubien's sponsorship, the first group of farmers and
settlers arrived in San Luis, and they established a placita,
an enclosed village community, and worked with Beaubien
to create a set of rules about communal ownership
of nearby land. There were two
pieces of public land that were part of the
Sangre de Cristo Land Grant. One was the Vega, and the
other one was the Sierra. Under the control
of Carlos Beaubien, the settlers of
San Luis arranged for the use of 900 acres
of common pasture land, where everybody could graze
their cattle or sheep. It was known as La Vega,
and La Vega in San Luis still exists today. It's still the largest
common in America today. The only other extant
common is the Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts, which
is only a couple of acres. La Vega is 900 acres
of community land that everybody can use for
grazing their livestock. And then the other
piece of the public land was the Sierra, which
is the mountain, and that was to be used for
hunting and for cutting wood. And they enjoyed those
rights without interruption through a succession of
different land owners. Somebody sold it
and didn't bother to tell the people that it
had been sold, and by the time people figured it out,
a man named Jack Taylor, and he put up a fence and
didn't want to let people on it. Effectively separating them from
their communal usage rights. The fight over who
had access and who had rights to use
resources on Culebra Peak began to wend its way through
the courts and the 1960s, and the 1970s, and the
one 1980s, and the 1990s. For more than 40 years,
residents of San Luis fought to restore their
traditional communal rights. Finally in 2002, the
Colorado Supreme Court decreed that the
residents of San Luis still should enjoy
their communal use rights to the mountain tract. And so now people who
own land on the land grant-- you're given a key
to get access to the ranch. So it's still privately
owned, but can be accessed by people who
live on the land grant. The Taylor family
no longer owns it, but the owners today are working
with the San Luis community to make sure that all of their
rights that were guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, rights that were enshrined in the deed
that Carlos Beaubien gave to the residents of San
Luis-- that those rights are being honored today. We all have keys to get
in, but one of these days the locks will be changed, and
none of us will have access. San Luis is the oldest
non-Indian community in Colorado, dating
to 1851, and by 1852, the settlers in San Luis began
digging their first irrigation works to divert water
out of the Culebra River and into the Vega. They filed a claim on
that ditch in 1852, which makes it the priority
water right in Colorado. There's a main head
gate that brings the water in from the
Culebra River into the ditch. As the water flows
down the ditch, the first properties then
have their own head gate. They block off the
water, and the water then goes onto their field. So acequias are the way
that we irrigate our crops. It's a flood irrigation. And so those ribs
of ditches make sure that all the
land is flooded. The Moorish influence
in our communities was the acequias, making
sure that the land had access to water, and the
water had access to land so you
could grow a crop, and doing that in such a
way that gravity provided a majority of the work so
that the bodies weren't being used to move the water. It was actually the
water moving itself. Then once their shares are used
then they close their gate, release the water to
go down the ditch. The next person opens
their head gate, and they never
irrigate their land. Colorado's water law
is entirely based on the idea of first in
time, first in right, which means the oldest continual users
have the priority water rights. The people's ditch is the
oldest priority water right. So if water dries up
everywhere else in Colorado, the users of the people's
ditch get their water first. So even Colorado
water law reflects Mexican law,
reflects Spanish law, reflects Arabic law when it
comes to the use of water. The Spanish word for
the people's ditch is La Acequia Madre,
the mother ditch. You think of these
ditches as arteries where the life blood of
a community, the water flows in order to keep the
community vibrant, and alive, and thriving. Without water, there is no life. There's life for plants. Animals then sustain
life from the plants. As humans, we sustain life
through plants that we raise, crops or animals that
we raise domestically or that people hunt. And so you begin to see this
growing natural landscape along the ditch lines that
flow through these communities. So not only do they hold
the communities together, but they're threads
of nature that run along the courses
of the village. Without water, none of
those would be possible. So people use the
plants for medicine, for food in order to maintain
life, and all of that's possible through the water. Imagine what it's like if you're
a settler in San Luis in 1852. You're in this land that's
claimed by the United States, but this is land that is
really controlled by the Utes, and there is a lot of
tension, a lot of friction. Towns like San Luis were
built in enclosed squares to provide protection
and fortification in the case of an Indian raids,
and certainly that was needed. The Utes were still contesting
the Spanish settlers' right to live in the valley, but
by 1852, the United States government intervened by
building a military post called Fort Massachusetts in the
northern portion of the valley along the flanks
of Mount Blanca. Fort Massachusetts was in
existence for six years and originally was thought to
be an ideal location where they could look out over the
valley and see if there were any marauding native
tribes, but it turned out to be an isolated spot, and
so in 1858, Fort Garland was established. I think it gave a
sense of safety, a sense of access to the larger
region on those trade routes and a little bit
sense of protection. But in fact, it was also
there to keep an eye on the Hispanos themselves,
because in 1852, the United States was only four years
away from the war of conquest, where the United
States had acquired southern Colorado and the
rest of the American southwest from Mexico. Those Hispanos who
lived in the valley in the 1850s-- many of them had
fought on the side of Mexico in their war against
United States' aggression. So Fort Massachusetts
and its successor, Fort Garland, which
was completed in 1858, were there to keep the
peace between the Hispanos and the Utes. They were also there to
keep an eye on the Hispanos. One of the reasons that it
was easier to settle San Luis was because the Americas
had already taken over. Also the valley is an
important part of Colorado, but a lot of the
settlements and stuff began because of Fort Garland. Without the fort, perhaps
nothing would have been here. One of the most prominent
early settlers of San Luis was a man named Dario
Gallegos, and Dario established a grocery store,
which is still in existence today. It's now known as the R and R
Grocery, established in 1857. It's the oldest continual
business in Colorado. R and R market is
a general store that was established by my
great great grandfather, Dario Gallegos. When the Santa Fe
Trail opened up, he sent wagon
trains to St. Louis to bring back
products that were not available easily from Mexico. The big products that he
brought were shoes and boots. The market was a place where
people came to socialize. The 20th of the month
was a big day in town. Everybody looked forward
to coming on that day to meet families, and
to meet other people, and to talk about what was
going on in everybody's family, and it was a great
time for people. His family was very well
respected because of the way they treated their customers. They gave credit, farm
implements, and that sort of thing, and pay it off. People were able to get
things that they needed. He died at a very young age. He was wounded on one
of those trips coming from St. Louis over La Veta
Pass when the Utes attacked him. He lost two of his men, and
it would take him nine months to make the round
trip to St. Louis. He was a young man, but
a very energetic person. Saw the future,
understood the future, and left the been most
successful business in the state when he was gone. The original settlers
were all Catholic. When the first settlers arrived,
they did several things. One was to build some shelter. The next thing that they
did was to dig a ditch to channel water from
the creek to the fields in order to raise crops. Then the next thing was
to build the church. The oldest church in
Colorado is San Acacio. Ute Indians were pushing back
hard against the Hispanos in southern Colorado,
trying to drive them out of places like the valley. And so the community
story goes all of the men were out working in
the fields one day, and they had left behind
the women, and the children, and the elderly in their
little adobe placita, and that's when the
Ute Indians struck. And when the people saw that
the Native Americans were coming to attack, they
gathered and they prayed to the patron
saint of soldiers, San Acacio, Saint Acacius. As the villagers were
on the ground praying, the Ute Indians rode up and then
turned around and rode away. As they were praying,
the Native Americans that were going to attack
noticed up in the clouds this image of a Roman
soldier, and they backed away and did not attack. And because Saint Acacius, San
Acacio, answered their prayers, they established a church in the
spot and named it San Acacio. And if you go to this
little town today, there is still a chapel
there, and if you go inside, they still tell the
story of San Ysidro and the miracle of San Acacio. Religion in the San Luis
Valley played a primary role because we were so far
away from the church. People taught their
kids to read and write so that they could
study the Bible. They established an organization
known as the Penitentes because they were so
isolated that there were no priests available
to conduct religious rituals and practices. They built buildings
that were utilized for religious ceremonies. They acted in the stead of
the priests, who were only able to visit the community
maybe once every six months or once a year to perform
baptisms and weddings. The church itself was
part of the community. It was just vital
to the community. It provided the structure. Many times the social
outlets for the community were through the church,
and so the church has always been significant. Faith and religion is such an
important part of San Luis. San Luis even sits in
a mountain range that is named after the
blood of Christ, so the entire
landscape is infused with religious significance,
with spiritual significance, with the stories
of Christianity, with the stories of saints. Growing up we were taught that
being stewards of the land and family were the things
that we had to take care of. In so many ways the San Luis
Valley is a cultural island. The people who moved into
the valley in the 1800s trace their traditions and
their cultures back to Spain in the Middle Ages. The Spanish language
of San Luis is unique. The Spanish that's spoken here
is a combination of vocabulary from many different sources. It has a lot of
archaisms, so it's a lot of Spanish that was spoken
during the time of Cervantes. So it's easy for us to read
Cervantes and understand it, because a lot of the
words and the nuances are the way we speak
and the way we think. Because we were isolated and
because the Spanish settlers did not have constant
communication with Spain, they didn't know the new
rules that were changing, the new words that
were added, or how things might have been
changing in the language, and that isolation kept
the language intact. Nowhere else in the world
do you have Nahuatl, the Aztec language, or
French, or Calo, English-- all those things coming
together to create this Spanish that we use in northern New
Mexico and southern Colorado. So we have this combination
of a language that has four or five
different elements that have been added to it. I think that preservation
of the language is key to preserving culture. The last of culture to
disappear is the cuisine. We tend to share some
of the same attributes that northern New Mexico retains
in the green and red chili. Chilli and beans,
tortillas, bunuelos, which other people call
sopapillas, but we bunuelos. We do a lot of fried potatoes. Obviously potatoes are big here. And we wanted to maintain
a fresh form of corn for the winter months, and
so we put it in the hornos and cooked it. We would then take it off
the cob and preserve it. And then we would cook it
by itself or with beans, and it would give it a
fresh kind of taste of corn. And because of our
history to the land and our connection
to the land, we have been able to grow
our own food here, even though we have a
very short growing season. The valley is so isolated. It's so far away from
centers of government, or commerce, or any of
the cultural centers, and so the settlers in
the valley over time really had to rely
on their own devices in order to maintain a sense
of culture and community. The SPMDTU was established
on November 21, 1900. Which is the Protection for the
Society of the United Workers. It's the oldest Hispanic
organization in the country. It is a group of
people who got together to fight against the incursion
of Anglos into the area. Family support needed to
occur so that people could, A, learn the new language,
learn the new customs, incorporate those into
their own, and as well, try to retain their own sense
of culture and community, and more importantly, be
treated fairly, and equitably, and justly in regards to the
way their land was treated and their families were treated. The settlers in the
valley over time really had to rely
on their own devices in order to maintain a sense
of culture and community. The SPMDTU became an extremely
cohesive social force in the San Luis Valley that
held together these isolated communities and provided
a sense of mutual identity and mutual protection. You could come together in
this organization as a larger community. It's important to
be able to save some of the remnants of
how we lived in the past. History is experiences. Preservation allows
people to go back in time and see how people
lived, how they survived using what was
at hand-- things like mud to create adobe bricks to
build homes, to build churches. All our traditions and
ways of life were exciting, and I'm interested
in seeing what we can do to preserve
those ways of life that have been so productive for
the Hispano culture here. Identifying and
understanding that history is important for
our communities. It gives us a sense of
pride in who we are. It connects us to the
larger Latino community throughout the
United States, and it enables you to see that
you, in this generation, are not the only one that
comes to the table with issues, and trials, and tribulations,
but that people behind you, your antepasados, which
are your ancestors, also had those same kinds of
trials and tribulations. And it is your lineage
that creates your ability to move forward,
and understanding that helps you be successful. We were the first
ones that were here short of the American
Indian, and so we were here, and we're still here. People when I say we don't want
the Taco Bells and McDonald's here. We want to maintain our culture. We want to maintain
the traditions. We want to be good stewards
of the land and the water. We want to maintain the family,
keep the close family ties, and we will fight
to maintain them. Even though we're
isolated, we're still very much a part
of mainstream America. We have a lot of firsts. We have oldest ditch,
oldest store, oldest church, and our legacy is that
we're preserving that. That is important
to us, that we want that to be recognized and
continue in the future. It's a land and a
people that contributes to the rich cultural diversity
of a place like Colorado. Colorado wouldn't be Colorado
without the San Luis Valley, the Hispanic, and Spanish,
and Chicano heritage that is so much part of
our fabric comes from the southern
part of Colorado, from the centuries long story
of Hispanic people and American Indians. That story is
embedded in the heart of who we are as Coloradans. The more we know
about it, the richer our own lives are and the
richer our sense of identity as Coloradans really can be.
